>ikf
The only way to make suburbia livable would be to tear it all up and redo the road structure and make walking and mass transit the primary means of travel.
It honestly would be easier to just bulldoze it entirely instead of trying to convert it.
I don't know about Australia, but Quebec is the only city in America and Canada that doesn't cars choking it up everywhere.
Japan got it right. Smaller houses, narrow roads, plenty of parks nearby, shops usually a short walk away, good public transport. Completely incompatible with diversity though.
And Quebec isn't that relevant of a city, either. I've heard that suburbia was deliberately engineered by the US Government to disperse the thereto-dense urban populations lest they be more vulnerable to attacks by gommies.
Yeah, here's the main street of my Chicago neighborhood; pretty comfy IMO.
>MUH QUARTER ACRE
It was a culmination of many things at once.
1. Automobile new and interesting.
2. Oil and Automobile companies wanted people to become dependent on their products
3. White flight
4. Cheap easy to build housing after WW2
I don't know if your theory is true at all but it wouldn't surprise me.
i dunno that feel lel
memes aside, there's really only two towns in all of newfoundland that feel suburbish, Gander and Mount Pearl
all the small towns are comfy coastal baytowns that are hundreds of years old with a house every half km or so
Expenditure on roads and transportation is very wasteful. Suitable only for the first world.
mall, playing yard for childs
cinema etc
>For just one small example of many: life in a subdivision cul-de-sac keeps children from exploring and becoming conversant with the wider world around them, because it tethers their social lives and activities to their busy parents’ willingness to drive them somewhere. There’s literally nowhere for them to go. The spontaneity of childhood in the courtyard, on the street, or in the square gives way to the managed, curated, prearranged “play-date.”
This has nothing to do with suburbia, when I was a kid in the early-mid 90s me and the other kids in the neighborhood used to wander all over the place and parents kept a collective eye on us to make sure we weren't getting into any real trouble. There was no isolation at all. Besides, stuff like going to the mall or the arcade requires parental supervision whether cars are involved or not.
The worst is all the fucking useless "green"space (it's not green, it's just fucking dry dead grass and dirt).
A few years back, I tried to actually utilize all the useless greenspace across the road from my house by starting to build a community garden in it. Then the local council and local NIMBY's got up my ass, threatened me with fines and demolished it.
That was basically when I gave up on ever hoping for any sort of improvement to my local area.
Pic related, yeah, such a fucking beautiful sight ruined by community gardens.
Fucking NIMBY fuckheads.
I dislike suburbia but city living in the USA sucks ass thanks to "diversity". Urban apartment buildings are almost always infested with ghetto people who are loud as fuck at all hours of the day and night, and moving into the city increases the chance of your car getting stolen by about a billion percent thanks to the constant presence of gangs.
That's because suburban faggots only care about their property values and have no taste in any culture or art.
They're utterly materialistic to the core. Can't wait to get out of this shithole.
There are decent neighborhoods in cities. You just have to be smart about picking location and mind where you go.
Sure there is a higher chance of crime, but things you can do there is infinitively higher.
Though American cities are shit-tier as far cities go.
Decent neighborhoods in cities cost way more than I can afford, or will be able to afford in the near future.
>only care about their property values
Ding. It's why any attempt at urban revitalization by building medium-high density apartments or terrace housing around local shopping districts or amenities is always blocked.
Near the middle of my fucking CITY there is a very low density suburb filled with old rich fucks, huge amounts of green space, massive houses, in prime real estate, close to the city, close to where people work.
They wanted to build 2000 new dwellings in this area, terraced housing.
Blocked. An area, literally 5 minutes drive, 15 minutes walk from the heart of the CBD, stuck as low density because old rich fucks don't want their investment properties devalued, meanwhile, the rest of the city has to put up with less housing affordability and urban sprawl.
Property speculators are the bane of urban planning.
Suburbia might be my own personal hell.
All of the inconvenience of rural life, but none of the privacy. All of the crass commercialism of urban life, but none of the community.
Like my saying.
"None of the benefits of rural life, none of the benefits of city life"
I think that looks cute. Looks like the perfect place to have kids.
suburbia sucks to live in as a 20-something.
suburbia is the best place to raise a child while working a non-rural job.
true. yet americans scoff at living in apartments or not living at a house. when your houses are at irrelevant parts of city 30 minutes (at best) from anything fun and interesting going on + houses are made of cardboard, you can tear them down with your own hands. with most houses you can kick the door and it will open.
meanwhile apartments are located at hearts of the city, all services are close, everything is convenient, people are close but at the same time you can enjoy solitude.
no reason to live in your own house/in suburbia unless you're like 50 year old and your life is done and you just want to die peacefully or raise your kids or sleep all day or whatever other boring soul-killing shit.
It really isn't.
The problem being there is little to no social interaction in suburbia, especially in the post-2000s where everyone has consoles and computers.
I never, ever see kids out an about in Suburbia these days. Parks are empty, streets are empty, everything is empty and void of life.
Yeah, I've also heard that credit exploded after WW2 since the government wanted to increase consumer spending and thus the economy after the Great Depression. But yeah, interesting how things like that work.
>Can anything be done to make suburbia more livable?
By having shops, bars and restaurants in it.
Dormitory suburbs are so fucking retarded.
A lot of young Americans really prefer the city, but the trouble is that nicer cities or nicer areas of cities are prohibitively expensive for people just getting started with their careers, and if you can't afford to live in the nice area then your only other option is to live in places that are shitty as a single adult and absolutely not an option if you want to raise a family in peace. White kids who go to predominantly nonwhite schools get bullied like you wouldn't believe.
This. Cities are either Downtowns, Yuppievilles, or Ghettos, with very little if anything in between. In Chicago, however, there are still urban suburbs like Oak Park and Evanston that are right next to the city and follow the grid and have public transportation.
> White kids who go to predominantly nonwhite schools get bullied like you wouldn't believe.
isnt that a meme
bullied how? as in excluded kinda? that's normal, that happens to non-whites as well, and on a much grander scale, ask any asian kid. or bullied like a pack of niggerlings attacking white kid?
hmm, so it isnt possible to live at a relevant city's relevant part in an inexpensive apartment? sucks cock.
Yeah living in a comfortable home next to a bunch of friendly neighbors must be suffering. Shut the fuck up with this bourgeois belly aching.
Well where I'm from a condo in a decent city neighborhood will cost just as much or less then a house out in the suburbs.
>it isnt possible to live at a relevant city's relevant part in an inexpensive apartment? sucks cock.
Not alone, no, although in Hyde Park in Chicago University of Chicago students often pool their money together and become roommates in the local apartments. Suburbia does seem somewhat unnerving, though.
Where are you from?
Shit meant that for
Cities are cramped, expensive, and full of undesirables.
>By having shops, bars and restaurants in it.
>Dormitory suburbs are so fucking retarded.
Every time I ever bring this up I get the "You can walk around, you can ride your bike, what more do you want? There is more to life than bars!" excuse for single zone planning.
It's basically a "I like eating shit, why don't you like eating shit as well!? Are you too good for shit?" attitude.
The other hilarious stupid idea I get from people is that you CAN actually walk everywhere in a suburb, "The local shops are only a 15 minute walk, the local town center (shopping mall) is only an hour walk! are you just lazy?!"
As someone put it better than me, "A mile in an suburb is a lot longer than a mile in Rome."
I either like city life or country life, 2bh, and the suburbs seem like an unhappy compromise.
>downtown
Not sure if you're a child or a foreigner
Either way fuck off
>Where are you from?
SoCal, LA metro area
Not sure if your mom didn't want you or dad didn't try. Probably both.
Huh, even the city proper of Los Angeles seemed too sprawled out for my liking, though then again I'm from Chicago which might have influenced my thoughts.
Trying to talk in ways Americans/Europeans will understand.
Australia doesn't really have a name for medium/high density suburbs apart from Inner*direction*.
Rather interesting, given that "inner city" means ghetto in the US.
>bullied how? as in excluded kinda?
As in constantly harassed and subjected to violence. The occasional slanty eyes joke Asian kids hear at mostly white schools is no comparison, and most definitely does not happen on a much grander scale. Violence is almost nonexistent in schools where the students are predominantly Asian or white. It's when you throw black and Hispanic kids into the mix that everything goes to hell. And that same rule carries on into adulthood and is why city living sucks in this country. Blacks are already there and now the beaners are moving in.
>he refers to downtown as "suburb"
Are you mentally challenged, lad?
Oh it definitely is, but all American cities are sprawled out car filled shitholes, so it doesn't really matter. LA is just the most extreme one.
Yeah, I see what you're saying.
Australian cities didn't develop in a way that created inner city ghettos.
Ghetto's do sort of exist, but more in the outer-suburbs.
Again, in Australia, we call all urban neighbourhoods "suburbs".
For example, the suburbs of, Carlton, Port Melbourne, Southbank etc is the CBD in Melbourne.
Anything that is not the "CBD" (place with tall buildings) but still has high/medium density, is called the "inner north" or "inner south" etc. but they are still Suburbs.
Australia has weird naming conventions for urban design.
Only ownhouses and 5-storied nordic-style gommieblocks with good soundproofing and green parks should be allowed as housing options for humans, anything else should be illegal and demolished asap.
Tall skyscrapers, office buildings and 18'th century coffieshops = downtown
Factories, railways, ports = industrial area
Anything else = suburbs and countryside
Kek, this guy is based.
There is nothing wrong with Siberia
>Japan got it right. Smaller houses, narrow roads, plenty of parks nearby, shops usually a short walk away, good public transport.
Pretty much.
There is a reason urban planners and architects all circlejerk over Japan.
The only thing I don't like about Japan is how small some of the apartments and such are. White people are never going to put up with shoebox sized houses and apartments.
>Think whatever you like of the Soviets and former eastern bloc countries, but the socialists had it absolutely figured out. The city planning of cities in these countries is top notch. All the neighbourhoods are perfectly laid out with lots of open spaces and playgrounds for kids to play, apartment blocks of 6 to 20 stories. Very walkable environemnts, shops, restaurants, schools, large retail, local gov buildings, parks, basically everything you need is within a few minutes of walking distance.
>I live in such a city, grew up in such a city. Because of the well designed environment I lived in, I had an awesome childhood. I made tons of friends because there were just so many kids around everywhere, social interaction is very important for the developing mind. I had tons of stuff to do. Didn't need my mom or dad to drive me anywhere because the city has a pretty substantial public transportation system - from busses and trolleys to trams and subway, it covers the entire city, with a population 1.5 million.
and
>The first time I visited a former Eastern bloc city back in the 1990's the first thing that struck me was the public squares. None of them would win any prizes for landscape design or architecture. But they worked in a way which was very impressive - paths went exactly where people wanted to walk, seats were in the places people wanted to sit, the grassy places were exactly in the spots which got the most sun. They were obviously designed and managed by people who lived in the city and used the parks and wanted them to be good, even with a very small budget.
Comments I read just a few hours ago on another site.
theguardian.com
ah yes the time before people had cars
>Can anything be done to make suburbia more livable?
MORE COMMIEBLOCKS
I actually don't mind commie blocks, except for the fact that they look like shit.
Throw a nice facade on them and they would be pretty based, except for the crazy amount of green space around them.
Brasilia was "commie block" city that failed and fell flat on it's face for this very reason. Green space destroy's walk ability.
Yeah the whole "let's put a lot of nature in the city" is a fake good idea.
1. Keep the houses detached (t. someone who's had plenty of experience living in apartments) but downsize them. 3000 sqft for the average new house in North America and Australia is fucking moronic. This way you gain green space or can also downsize the lots for fewer distances.
2. Remove cul-de-sacs. People who live in them go on about muh low traffic and muh safety for playing children, but instead they're generating even more traffic for everyone else because they now have to drive (read: speed) three miles out of a tree of cul-de-sacs just to leave the neighborhood. The connector roads see ridiculous amounts of traffic. Use grids that are wavy and fractured to look less mathematical. Grids are efficient.
3. Change your moronic fucking zoning policies. Making entire square miles exclusively residential zoning is absolute fucking bullshit. There need to be possibilities to put small shops into the neighborhoods in walking distance. Lumping all the houses together in one place and then lumping all the shops together in another place is mind boggingly stupid.
I can scientifically prove that your opinions on this matter are wrong.
Oh and fix your god damn income inequality, America, so that the lower class isn't plagued by poverty as much and people aren't forced to geographically seperate by wealth. You literally have neighborhoods sorted by income bracket, it's ridiculous.
>Change your moronic fucking zoning policies. Making entire square miles exclusively residential zoning is absolute fucking bullshit. There need to be possibilities to put small shops into the neighborhoods in walking distance. Lumping all the houses together in one place and then lumping all the shops together in another place is mind boggingly stupid.
But what if you plan your cities based on Sim City or Skylines? There is no mixed zone option!
>Can anything be done to make suburbia more livable?
Suburbia is its natural state is where all the darkies live.
Remember: if it ain't white, it ain't right.
>not scattering small squares of light commercial zones around your neighborhoods so that shops can settle and people can walk for groceries
Le Corbusier was of the real villains of the 20th century.
lol pleb
*one of
Still the games center around American style planning.
There is no mixed use zoning where businesses and residential space is in the same plot.
And all the roads are way too wide, and you can't build pedestrian only roads
i don't even give a shit about any of this meme hipster muh city liiiiiife bullshit
the worst part about living in suburbia is commuting, kill me
There are pavement paths under decoration so that you can give people walkable shortcuts, the only downside is you can't place lots on them. But I'm sure there exists a mod for pedestrian zones somewhere.
lol, its way better than apartments